Having said all she wanted to, his mother ended the call. Five minutes later his phone rang again. This time it was Bergthóra.
‘How’s your father?’ she asked.
‘Fine,’ answered Sigurdur Óli, rather curtly.
‘Is everything OK?’
‘Yes. I’m working.’
‘Then I won’t bother you,’ said Bergthóra.
Höddi stepped out of his house as she spoke. He closed the door carefully behind him, testing the handle twice to make sure it was locked, then went over to the SUV and began detaching the trailer.
‘No, it’s OK,’ said Sigurdur Óli, trying not to sound too resentful, though he found it hard, recalling their last conversation. ‘Did I interrupt something last night?’
Höddi wheeled the trailer over to the snowmobiles and set it down, then climbed into his car and drove off. Sigurdur Óli allowed a few seconds to pass before starting his own engine and shadowing him at a distance.
‘Look,’ said Bergthóra. ‘I’ve been meaning to say that I met someone about three weeks ago and we’ve started seeing each other.’
‘Really?’
‘I was going to tell you the evening we met but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to.’
‘Who is he?’
‘No one you know,’ said Bergthóra. ‘At least, he’s not in the police. He works for a bank. And he’s very nice.’
‘I’m glad he’s nice,’ said Sigurdur Óli, finding it a challenge to follow Höddi’s SUV inconspicuously, while simultaneously talking to Bergthóra about things he really did not want to hear and not giving the fact away.
‘I can tell you’re busy,’ said Bergthóra. ‘Perhaps we should talk later.’
‘No, it’s all right,’ said Sigurdur Óli, turning on to the Breidholt dual carriageway behind Höddi, who was driving very fast. The temperature had dropped below freezing, the roads were as slippery as glass, and Sigurdur Óli still had summer tyres on his car. He struggled to maintain control. Höddi had opened up a lead and was storming north.
‘Did you call for any particular reason?’ asked Bergthóra.
‘Reason?’
‘When you called last night. You rang so late that I thought maybe something was wrong.’
‘No, I …’
Another turning, taken far too fast, through an amber light onto Bústadavegur. His tyres lost their grip momentarily. Höddi had disappeared over the hill by Bústadir Church. He was losing him, and sensed that he was losing Bergthóra too.
‘… just wanted to talk to you. I … I don’t know, I didn’t feel right about the way our meal ended. I just wanted to discuss it.’
‘Are you driving?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that a good idea? Talking on the phone?’
‘No, not really.’
Höddi turned up another road while Sigurdur Óli was faced with a red light. There was not much traffic, so after taking a quick glance around he shot the lights.
‘I know it’s none of your business really but I thought …’
‘What?’
‘I thought you seemed a bit … when you rang last night, you seemed so odd,’ said Bergthóra, as Sigurdur Óli watched Höddi cross the bridge over the Miklabraut dual carriageway. ‘Do you mind my seeing someone? Do you object?’
‘I …’ stammered Sigurdur Óli, wishing he could focus, ‘… I don’t have any right to object. You must do as you like.’
Bergthóra was silent, as if waiting for him to carry on. His tone of voice belied the words he had spoken. The silence became oppressive as he struggled mutely. He had rung her to find out if she was willing to see him again. It would be different from last time. He had meant to get a grip on himself, to listen to her point of view, to try not to be rigid and difficult. Not like his mother. But as he hurtled over the city’s icy roads, on summer tyres ill-equipped for the job, the right words eluded him.
‘I won’t take up any more of your time,’ said Bergthóra at last. ‘We’ll be in touch. Be careful — you shouldn’t use your phone while driving.’
All he wanted was to keep her talking, but his mind was blank.
‘OK,’ he said.
This could not have gone worse, thought Sigurdur Óli, as he watched Höddi disappear into the Vogar district and heard Bergthóra disconnect.
33
He had lost Höddi’s car but dared not drive any faster in these treacherous conditions. Turning into the street he thought Höddi had taken, he drove to the end, only to discover that it was a cul-de-sac, so he turned round, looking out for the SUV, and drove into the next street where he came to a junction. With no idea where to go, he decided to try left — home lay in that direction anyway and he was ready to give up. Then he caught sight of Höddi’s SUV parked outside a takeaway.
He cruised past, noting the sizeable queue and that Höddi was halfway along it, staring up at the illuminated pictures of the dishes. Sigurdur Óli parked at a safe distance and waited. The decision to follow Höddi had been entirely his own, the result of a sudden hunch. Usually he would not have been shadowing a suspect alone like this; there would have been other officers involved and the operation would have been carefully planned. But with nothing to go on but Höddi’s objectionable attitude, he had acted single-handedly, as he could not be certain of receiving the go-ahead. Yes, the man had undeniably set Sigurdur Óli’s teeth on edge, but that did not necessarily mean that he deserved to be put under twenty-four-hour surveillance.
Meanwhile, the takeaway queue inched forward. Sigurdur Óli assumed that Höddi was probably taking himself and the SUV for a drive, picking up a burger from his favourite place on the way. He certainly looked capable of putting away any number of cheeseburgers.
Hungry now himself, Sigurdur Óli imagined all the sizzling hamburgers in the joint, and this did nothing to strengthen his resolve. He had just decided to give up and go home, stopping on the way at some other greasy burger bar, when Höddi reappeared carrying a takeaway bag and climbed into his car.
He drove out of the neighbourhood and came to a junction where he crossed the coast road, heading east, down towards the Ellidavogur inlet. There he took a right, drove past a row of workshops and small business premises, and stopped outside one of them. Stepping out of his car, he went over to a workshop and opened the door with a key. No lights came on. Sigurdur Óli could not immediately see what the place was called but remembered how Thórarinn had escaped in the direction of the Kleppur mental hospital, then south towards the Ellidavogur inlet. Could he have ended up here? Was this where he had been hiding since he attacked Lína?
Knocking at the door did not seem a very sensible option, given that he was not sure how he would shape up against two debt collectors. But nor did he want to call for backup, since he had no proof that Toggi ‘Sprint’ was hiding inside. It was perfectly possible that Höddi had some legitimate business here; given his vehicle collection, he must have plenty of repair jobs on. Sigurdur Óli opted to wait in his car at a discreet distance, keeping an eye on the door.
Half an hour later, without any lights being switched on in the workshop, the door opened and Höddi emerged, no longer carrying the takeaway bag. Looking neither left nor right, he got into his car and drove away.
Sigurdur Óli allowed a decent interval to pass before easing himself out of his car and walking over to the building. He laid his ear to the door and listened. Nothing. When he looked up, he saw a sign: Birgir’s Auto Repair Shop. Next he went round behind the building, having to walk the length of the row before he could get round the back, then had to calculate how far along the repair shop was before he could establish that there was no exit on that side.
He walked softly back to the front of the workshop, gently tried the handle and discovered that the door was locked. He aimed three blows at it, and the large, sliding door of the adjoining garage entrance boomed loudly each time. Pressing his ear close again, he listened, but there was no sound. He banged the door with even grea
ter force, but there was no reaction, apart from what sounded like a low rumble that stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
Sigurdur Óli could see only two alternatives: either to break in somehow, or to wait for the staff to come to work the following morning. He looked at his watch: it would be a long night. He peered round for some sort of implement — even a rock would do. There were four small panes of glass in the door and he could see no sign that the building was alarmed. It probably did not contain anything worth stealing.
After hunting around he found a length of discarded piping nearby, weighed it in his hand, then used it to smash one of the panes. Then, having cleared the shards, he inserted his arm carefully, located the lock and opened the door. If questioned he would mention an anonymous tip-off and claim that the workshop had been like this when he arrived.
He closed the door behind him and tiptoed into the repair shop, groping for a light switch near the entrance and finding three in a row. A dim light came on somewhere up in the rafters at the back of the room where car tyres were piled. He remained motionless while getting his bearings. The place looked like any other garage in town and Sigurdur Óli wondered who this Birgir was and whether he was either a relative of Höddi’s or otherwise connected to Thórarinn — if indeed he was hiding here.
‘Hello!’ Sigurdur Óli called out but received no response. ‘Thórarinn!’ he shouted. ‘Are you in here?’
He walked past a small glass booth containing a reception desk, two chairs and a pile of grubby magazines on a table. The office presumably. Behind it he detected a faint smell of coffee and opened a door to a staffroom, which contained a table and seats for three people, a grimy coffee machine and any number of dirty mugs. In the bin he noticed the bag that Höddi had brought and a box containing a half-eaten burger and chips. Sigurdur Óli’s gaze lingered on the bin: could Höddi have been so desperate to eat his burger in peace that he had taken it to an empty garage on Ellidavogur, late at night?
‘Thórarinn! This is the police. We know you’re in here. We need to talk to you.’
There was no answer.
Sigurdur Óli walked back into the workshop.
‘Stop wasting my time!’ he called.
He was keen not to linger, feeling idiotic enough as it was, shouting like this in the hope that Toggi was hiding among the spare parts or heaps of tyres. If it turned out that he was not, Sigurdur Óli would feel a complete fool.
As he crossed the workshop, it occurred to him that something was missing. Over the years he had had a variety of cars, some good, others not so good, and he had often had occasion to go to repair shops and if the job was small hang around, or else hitch a lift home, or in the worst case call a taxi, though he tried to avoid that unless he had no other option. Generally he tried to get the mechanics to finish the job while he waited in the office or went for a stroll, so he reckoned he knew a thing or two about auto repair shops and in his estimation Birgir’s equipment was not exactly state-of-the-art.
He was standing in the middle of the floor when it dawned on him what was missing. The car lift.
Just at that instant he thought he heard a faint scraping sound beneath his feet.
Sigurdur Óli looked down. He was standing on a large, rectangular metal hatch, and the sound seemed to have come from underneath it. He stamped his foot.
‘Thórarinn!’ he called again.
There was no answer. But Sigurdur Óli understood now why there was no car lift in the garage: instead of raising the cars to get at their undersides, the mechanic would climb down into a pit which the vehicle was parked over. Birgir probably could not afford a hoist, but then perhaps he did not have any use for such equipment, nor for the pit, given that it was covered.
Sigurdur Óli soon discovered how to slide the metal hatch off the pit, and when he looked down there was Thórarinn sitting against the wall, staring up at him.
‘How the hell did you find me?’ he asked, unable to conceal his astonishment. He rose to his feet, still staring at Sigurdur Óli, then clambered out and dusted himself down.
‘Are you going to make trouble?’ asked Sigurdur Óli, who had rung for backup as Thórarinn was climbing out.
‘How the hell did you manage it?’
He did not put up any resistance.
‘Maybe I’ll tell you some time,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘Have you been here long?’
‘Only just arrived.’
‘So where have you been hiding?’
‘Jesus, I got a shock,’ Thórarinn said, ignoring the question. ‘I was eating a burger when I heard you banging on the door. All I could think of was the pit. Was it Höddi? Did you follow him?’ He had started to inch his way unobtrusively towards the door.
‘Stand still,’ ordered Sigurdur Óli. ‘There are cars on their way. You’re not going anywhere.’
‘You’re alone?’ exclaimed Thórarinn.
It was the second time that day Sigurdur Óli had been asked this question.
‘There are two men outside,’ he said. ‘They’re waiting for us.’
He hoped his lie sounded plausible enough to give Thórarinn pause, as he had no desire to be involved in another chase. They heard sirens in the distance.
‘And the street is filling with other units, as you can hear.’
‘Who grassed on Höddi?’
‘Just take it easy,’ said Sigurdur Óli, inserting himself between Thórarinn and the door. ‘We’d have found you eventually. Or you’d have given yourself up: you lot always do in the end.’
34
Thórarinn was taken to the police station on Hverfisgata. By then it was past midnight and they decided his interview could wait until morning, so Sigurdur Óli saw him safely installed in a cell. He had intended to lie about how he had tracked Thórarinn down in order to keep Kristján’s name out of it, but was not sure he would get away with this. It would be better to claim he had received one of those anonymous phone calls saying that Höddi was somehow linked to Thórarinn. The tip-off, he would say, had not seemed particularly credible but he had decided to follow it up anyway, by shadowing Höddi, who he had seen buying a hamburger before heading towards the Ellidavogur inlet area. At that point he had remembered the direction Toggi had taken after Lína’s attack, and thought the matter deserved closer investigation. After Höddi had entered the garage and emerged minus the takeaway, Sigurdur Óli had decided to take immediate action and broke into the workshop, finding Thórarinn inside.
By telling the story this way, he hoped to deflect attention from Kristján and did not feel remotely ashamed of his lie. Kristján may have been a bloody fool but there was no need to set two debt collectors on him. In the event, no one questioned his account: what mattered was that Thórarinn had been caught; how it had happened was less important. The police often found themselves having to improvise.
Later that night Höddi and the garage owner, Birgir, together with an employee, were arrested and escorted to Hverfisgata. The baseball bat that Thórarinn had used to batter Lína was found in a skip about two hundred metres from the garage, stained with blood at one end.
As he was leaving the office, Sigurdur Óli bumped into Finnur.
‘You should have called for backup,’ said Finnur, who was still in charge of the investigation. ‘It’s not your own show, even if your friends are mixed up in it.’
‘I’ll remember that next time,’ said Sigurdur Óli.
Early next morning he took part in the interrogation of the three suspects. Birgir claimed complete ignorance that his workshop was being used as a safe house for criminals and flatly denied any complicity. It transpired that Höddi owned a share in the business and had his own key. Neither Birgir nor his employee had been aware of Toggi’s presence during opening hours, so he must have hidden himself unbelievably well if he had been there during the day. The workshop was small and in the course of a normal day’s work they were in and out of every corner, so it was more likely that he had hidden there at night. Since n
either Birgir nor the man who worked for him had a police record, their statements were taken on trust and there was deemed to be no reason to keep them in custody.
‘Who’s going to pay for the broken glass?’ asked Birgir despondently when he heard about the damage to the garage door. He had mentioned that business was slack and that they could not afford any setbacks.
‘You can send us the bill,’ Sigurdur Óli said, not sounding particularly encouraging.
Höddi proved a tougher nut to crack. He was in a sullen, obstructive mood after a night in the cells and took exception to everything he was asked.
‘How do you know Thórarinn?’ asked Sigurdur Óli for the third time.
‘Shut your face,’ said Höddi. ‘You’d better watch your back when I get out of here.’
‘Why, are you going to kneecap me?’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Are you threatening me, you prick?’
Höddi stared at Sigurdur Óli, who smiled back.
‘Shut your face,’ he said again.
‘How do you know Thórarinn?’
‘We both fucked your mother.’
Höddi was escorted back to the cells.
Thórarinn did not appear remotely intimidated when he was brought up for questioning. In the interview room he took a seat next to his lawyer, facing Sigurdur Óli, and lounged with his legs spread, drumming one foot rhythmically on the floor. Finnur joined in the questioning. They asked Thórarinn first where he had been hiding for the last few days and the answer came promptly: when he shook off the police that evening, he had run to Birgir’s repair shop and hidden outside, before later fleeing to Höddi’s place. Höddi had initially hidden him in his own house but after receiving a visit from the police he had told him to go down to the garage and wait for him there. They had met after closing time and Höddi had let him in, then come back later with food. Next, Thórarinn had been planning to move to Höddi’s summer cottage in Borgarfjördur, in the west of the country, where he would hide out for a few days while considering his options.
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